Tag: duelyst

So, as discussed in the previous post, I wanted to talk about something we’re going to frequently encounter on the ladder. His name? Frustration, Mechaz0r. Mechaz0r at first seems like a super neat idea, it requires 5 cards to be complete, and then you win the game!

Sound familiar?

Hmm…This isn’t Duelyst is it?

No, it’s not Duelyst, but there’s if you recall the discussion about when minions become answer or die, or else you lose the game, there is a very specific minion in the game that is extremely similar to that, except you can see it coming a mile away.

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For Mechaz0r to be built, it requires 5 of any combination of the following cards:

With the exception of Helm of Mechazor, they all have innate abilities as well as progressing mechaz0r’s “birth” by 20% each time any one is played. It doesn’t matter if duplicates are played – they still progress to the mechaz0r.

1 mana – Helm of Mechaz0r –
2 mana – Wings of Mechaz0r -Airdrop (can be dropped anwyhere on the field)
3 mana – Cannon of Mechaz0r – Ranged (can reach anywhere on the field with attack without moving)
3 mana – Sword of Mechaz0r Frenzy (adjacent and diagonal tiles can all be targetted at once)
4 mana – Chasis of Mechaz0r(Cannot be targeted by spells)*

*Area of Effect spells not included

So what’s the big deal with this? Oh, well it’s just a card that’s 8 health, 8 attack, and receives all of the innate abilities and is played for 0 mana once mechaz0r reaches 100% completion.

the forbidden one

So game over, right? The game has an internal clock that just determines that if you don’t win by the time the opponent gets out this card, you just lose, right?

No – that’s not the case, and that’s where the meta comes in. There’s a 3 attack, 3 health minion that costs 3 mana.

It’s value is 3. That’s right, it’s only 3. Using our algorithms, this card falls very very flat on it’s face when you compare the fact that our most basic card Windblade Adept has a value of 4 when zealed – which it should always be.

the main offender

I’m sure you can see where this is going, and that will be continued in the next article. But for now, know that Crossbones is a hard counter to Mechaz0r, and depending on the meta you decide on whether or not to play him.

Summary:
There is a controversial “1-2-3-4-5” you-win in Duelyst that largely ignores the other elements of the game.

There is a hard counter that fails our algorithm test – Crossbones, that can instantly destroy a Mechaz0r with its Opening Gambit

Including Crossbones (a card that using our previous expressions to calculate value, the card would falsely appear to be useless.) in your deck depends on the meta – which is how many players are deciding to play the game this way (mechaz0r)

PS: If you guys could let me know about the length of each article (too long? too short?) I would greatly appreciate the feedback.

Last article I concluded with a shocking and upsetting revelation regarding Songhai, the next faction available on the list in Duelyst. As I mentioned previously, I am actually a Songhai main, but when I took it apart and dissected it for purposes of blogging about it, I realized very quickly that there was an inherent problem with Songhai’s beginning deck, general, cards…the whole 9 and a half yards, so to speak.
Needless to say I was pretty taken aback by this. I had a hard time beating the NPC, nevermind beating a real live person. I wanted to continue the discussion on Songhai today with additional “back-breaking investigative research” (playing Video Games) but I happened to Superman Bounce (or double-jump: depending on where you live) my laptop out of my bed and onto the floor.
So for the majority of yesterday and today, I was computerless. For a guy like me, that’s pretty devastating. Needless to say, I don’t have much material in the way of Songhai to sling your way today.

However, the topic of meta comes to mind and I want to take the time to discuss that.
I know, I know I said this would be a jargon free, easy to read blog, but meta is such an important piece of jargon for gaming in general that if you don’t already know what it means there is going to be some point in your life (preferably now) where you find out just what exactly it does mean.

The meta, as defined by me is the game state and how it’s currently played not by development of the game creators and developers, but by development of the understanding of the game, the strategies that work, and the counters to those strategies as the game matures and develops itself over-time.

This might be hard to visualize without an abstraction, so I’ll give you a different example. Ever heard of the “Death of the Author” argument? No? How about this then, ever decide in your head that the real meaning behind a movie or book is different from what the author proposed? That, now that the author has released his or her universe upon the world, the world has free reign to shape and design it how they please and their old intentions and interpretations have died with their release to the public of the content.

Does that sound familiar to you? I’m sure it does.

In gaming, meta is like that except a lot less dramatic. It certainly has it’s fair share of people who disagree with what it really is, and even discussing what meta means is going to have it’s fair share of people who don’t agree with how I define it.

For our purposes, we needn’t care. In a less flowery, verbose format:

The meta is the state of the game as defined and shaped by the community at that given time, not exactly by the developers.

this is getting a little lengthy so I’ll continue the rest in a 2nd part released tomorrow.

Summary:

The meta, as defined by me is the game state and how it’s currently played not by development of the game creators and developers, but by development of the understanding of the game, the strategies that work, and the counters to those strategies as the game matures and develops itself over-time.

Last time, we talked about synergy. We noticed that divine bond had immense synergy with some of the cards in our deck – and we mentioned that we are going usually win if we can get it out on the board on top of an active monster and attack the same turn.
That’s in a perfect situation – it won’t be like that everytime. But when it is, it’s great – we’re more than likely winning that match.

So now that we know the deck works with divine bond, what do we do to build around it to ensure that we last that long, get to play, it, and get to win?

Well, to get there, we’re going to need to stall.

Remember all those provoke minions? They become hugely important to control the opponent until you can get your divine bond and win the game!
This is called a win condition, and your deck type is called an archetype – which is not a word that I will be using very frequently because it’s jargon and we don’t need jargon.

So we have a few options for controlling our opponent and the board with provoking right now. Let’s build a deck and come up with an explanation for every card. If you can’t find an explanation, you don’t need it, or you need to think of a better explanation or run 2 copies because you might need it, but don’t know what to do with it.

For now, we’re going to stick with 3 ofs.

The proposed deck has been seen before, and here it is once more. Here’s the explanation behind everything in the deck:

Rock Pulverizer: Provoke
Vale Hunter: (Ranged, can pick off pesky hard to reach objectives)
Windblade Adept: 2 cost 3/3 when zealed (6 – 2 = 4)
Saberspine Tiger: Removes any 3 health or lower units that need to be answered quickly due to its rush ability which allows it to be played the same turn.
Silverguard Knight: Provoke
Lyssian Brawler: Good target for Divine Bond, celerity allows it to damage the general or any minion with less than 3 attack for 8 total if it sticks.
Primus Shieldmaster: Provoke
Brightmoss Golem: Excellent Divine Bond Target
Stormmetal Golem/Dragon Bone Golem: Game tempo

Tempo is playing upon the pace at which the game goes. At 7 mana for example, you’re going to want a 7 cost play.
Keep in mind this is all in a perfect game where all the cards you draw go your way and everything is awesome. You can still win, or lose without having your win condition even showing up in your hand. Think of it more of an ideal win condition rather than the only condition upon which you will win. Be attentive so that you can be adaptable and respond to situations as they arrive! You won’t always get your divine bond out and win, or even get it out at all, but you can still win – and of course, there will always be losses.

Tomorrow, we take a look at the other factions and their special abilities one at a time starting with Songhai. Once we break in all the factions, we will start discussing the board!

Summary:

A win condition is something you create your deck around based on the idea that in a perfect game x y z.

Run 3 copies of everything that helps you arrive there, 2 of things that might help.

Some people don’t like reading. Some people like reading, and can’t find the time. Some people just want to get to the bottom of it and don’t appreciate my flowery prose.

Whatever the case may be, I’m not here to judge you – here’s a complete summary of everything we learned this week (our first week!) It’s a lot, so for those of you who don’t like reading I do apologize but in summary:

Duelyst has two types of replace mechanisms in game to decrease the likelihood of probability being the sole cause of determining the winner or loser of games

The Mulligan (jargon), here-on referred to as the Pre-Game Replace at the start of the turn is often used to replace your highest mana minions. Duplicates in your deck of the same card can be returned during the Pre-Game Replace

The in-turn replace is best used at the start of your turn to increase the likelihood of you developing a better strategy.

Replace cards you don’t want to use that turn to maintain mana efficiency.

Replacing in-turn can never return the same card.

We can add some more functionality and data harvesting helper tools to improve our gameplay. (scripts)

After an arbitrary amount of games, decide to review which cards didn’t receive play or could be replaced using your replays.

We can create a pegging system to determine which cards are objectively better than others.

V = A + H – C (Value = Attack + Health – Cost).

Zeal is activated when you keep your general on any adjacent tile to the unit. Zeal is activated when you keep your general on any adjacent tile to the unit. Stay near a +2 1/5 zeal and it becomes 3/5 instead of 1/5. So (3 – 5 – 3 + p = 5 + p ) (where p is provoke)

Tempest, for example is 2 mana, deal 2 manage to everything. The formula is 2n-2 scales and scales with it’s potential damage.

It is possible to “run out of options” as the game progresses.

This is offset by having cards in your deck that allow you to draw cards.

This value can be determined by Value = A + D – C + VoCD

A = Attack, D = Defence, C = Cost, VoCD = Value of Card Drawn

All the cards in the range have to be taken into consideration, therefore your answer is a variable.

Dispel is an integral part of Duelyst and failing to have it absolutely can cost you the game.

Value = (Attack + Defence) – Cost + (Value of Dispel)

Value =(Attack + Defence) – Cost + (Value of Provoke)

Value of Provoke is the value of the value of the provoked minions.

The value of dispel is equal to the value of the dispel card + the amount of value removed from the minions dispelled.

Due to the situational nature of the game, an Opening Gambit’s value can have a huge range

Prismatic cards are rarer editions of cards that have no impact on gameplay other than aesthetic.

Deck synergy can win you the game

Synergy can make a minion become answer or die

There can be obvious synergy in the deck with card + card, but there can be less obvious synergies that can happen that can win you the game, don’t get stuck on just one card!

Yesterday we covered provoke and dispel. We are quickly beginning to understand all the fundamentals of the different aspects of the cards but we still have a long way to go. We have yet to talk about the board, different interactions with the board, mana tiles, and more. Yet still, we have managed to get quite a few winning games under our belt.

The board can sometimes be a chaotic and complicated mess that separates Duelyst as a game from other card games.

As we already know, different cards have different effects that can dramatically change the game. Some of those generate value over time, or the value is dynamic – like that of a provoke, as mentioned yesterday. Others still, generate their value by removing value from other cards – as demonstrated by the example featuring the ephemeral shroud.

Opening Gambit is a static, instantaneous value generator. It is usually extremely desirable because it happens immediately. In a way, provoke is an opening gambit as instantly anything on a directly surrounding tile becomes provoked. That’s not correct in the sense of Duelyst’s vocabulary, but it’s a good way to think of it if you are having difficulty.

As briefly mentioned, the value from an opening gambit is instantaneous. Using our method of creating algorithms in order to objectively understand the value of cards, opening gambit can appear to be a simple calculation at first.

Two different kind of cards with Opening Gambits

However, there are very complicated cards such as Blistering Skorn. Blistering Skorn deals 1 damage to everything, including itself. Blistering Skorn is 4 mana 4/5.

Why is blistering Skorn complicated? It’s complicated abstract an algorithm for the value of Blistering Skorn because its value has two important things that we have to take into consideration at once:
Its inherent reduction of your own value
Its increase of value due to its impact on the opponents value.

Truthfully, like most cards in Duelyst this card is extremely situational, which is something we have not addressed yet because we are trying to objectively define cards and determine their worthiness in our decks on mana cost alone.

That being said, In a situation where you have 5 units including your general on board, and your opponent has 1, the formula is

V = (4+5) – 4 + (1 -6)

V = 0.

That’s correct. When you have 5 units including your general, and your opponent only has their general on board, the value of skorn is 0. Note that it is 1-6 (1 being the opponent) and not 1-5 (5 being how many units you have on the board) as Blistering Skorn also damages itself. That doesn’t mean that Blistering Skorn is a bad card. Let’s reverse the situation.

Our opponent has 5 units including their general, and you have 1. Now the formula is:

V = (4 +5) – 4 + (6 – 2)

V = 9

Blistering Skorn can either be very useful or completely useless depending on the situation we’re in.

That’s all we’re going to touch upon for calculating opening gambits for now.
By now you have probably unlocked or received a different kind of copy of a card, a card that is purple, pink and green in the background. These cards are called prismatic cards and are rare copies of their regular counterpart. They have no impact on the gameplay and you cannot use prismatics to exceed the 3 copy limit.
There are two types of prismatic cards. Ones you receive for leveling up your faction, and those you receive in opening packs, by chance. These prismatics can be disenchanted into spirit which – with the Newbie Melee in our sites, will be a topic we will be talking about tomorrow along with deck synergy and why I removed necroseer from the deck again in favor of Brightmoss Golem.

Summary:

The board is an integral part of Duelyst and what separates it from other card games.

Opening Gambit is an effect similar to a spell that happens automatically.

Sticking to our formulae, the value of Opening Gambit can be Value = Value of Card + Value of Effect.

V = VoC + VoE

Due to the situational nature of the game, an Opening Gambit’s value can have a huge range

Blistering Skorn, for example can have a value of 9, a value of 0, and that’s not all.

Prismatic cards are rarer editions of cards that have no impact on gameplay other than aesthetic.

Progression prismatics cannot be disenchanted. Prismatics from card packs can be disenchanted for spirit – another essential part of Duelyst.

As discussed in my previous post, adding necroseer to the deck allowed us to draw more cards and slightly improved my deck score from 3-7 to 4-6, which is an improvement but still not 50% to show that I am winning at least half the time.

yesterday’s deck

The first card we have access to with dispel is ephemeral shroud

Dispel is a function that is used to remove the special status effects of minions and generals. It’s important for us to note that artifacts are not status effects and cannot be dispelled. It’s also important to note that mana tiles & shadow creep can be dispelled, but stun cannot be dispelled!

This is hugely important for us to get rid of those game-losing big threats that required us to immediately answer or we would lose.

Now we have an answer, and it’s only a 2 mana 1/1 minion.

Are we going to create an arbitrary value for this to be consistent with the system we have been developing to evaluate cards?
of course we are.

For dispel minions, let’s say:

V = C – (A+D) + (VoD)

Value = (Attack + Defence) – Cost + (Value of Dispel)

So, as you can see, the answer will be a variable. So what’s the point of this? Well….it sets up the perfect opportunity for us to make yet another formula for another keyword – one very important to Lyonar – Provoke.

The value of Primus Shield Master Is (4+6) – 4 + (3 + 3 ) for a value of 10. is this, objectively speaking, in almost every situation better than the other 4 drop neutral we have access to, Hailstone Golem?

(4+6) – 4 = 6

You freaking bet it is. It is even in situations where it’s only provoking one minion. Primus shieldmaster is still a value of 5 even if it’s not provoking anything yet.

So what happens when you dispel a shieldmaster with a value of 10? You subtract the value of the buff (as the shieldmaster is still alive) from the shieldmaster – the shieldmaster now has a value of 5, but your dispel from ephemeral shroud, originally a 0 value minion has now gained a value of 6! That is fantastic, and precisely why dispel is hugely important in Duelyst.

Here is the finalized deck for this next 10 games. Next, we talk about Opening Gambit and Prismatic Cards.

Summary:

Dispel is an integral part of Duelyst and failing to have it absolutely can cost you the game.

Value = (Attack + Defence) – Cost + (Value of Dispel)

Value =(Attack + Defence) – Cost + (Value of Provoke)

Value of Provoke is the value of the value of the provoked minions.

The value of dispel is equal to the value of the dispel card + the amount of value removed from the minions dispelled.

I decided that even though this account is less than a week old, I’d like to dive head first into the competitive scene of Duelyst, and take those of you who are interested along for the ride. This is an excellent opportunity for anyone who fits the following:

Has a low amount of cards / spirit

Has never been above Gold

Wants to try a tournament but doesn’t have the greatest cards.

For those of you who are not interested in those things, the tournament may not be for you. Even still – I encourage you to sign up and try it. Everyone who plays 1 round gets a free spirit orb. Everyone who enters is entered into a lottery to win 1 of 2 packs of 10 duelyst orbs. This is a fantastic way to bolster your collection if you don’t have very many cards.

There’s prizes too!

Prizes

1st Place: 10 Core Set Spirit Orbs

2nd Place: 7 Core Set Spirit Orbs

3rd and 4th Place: 5 Core Set Spirit Orbs

5th to 8th Place: 3 Core Set Spirit Orbs

So go ahead and register for the tournament, but you better hurry because registration closes This Friday – and the tournament begins on Saturday.

I will still be posting my regular content while practicing and gearing up for this tournament but for those of you who were confused as to what to do with spirit and core orbs if you didn’t want to embellish your set with expansion orbs (as disenchanting is rather complicated – a topic we weren’t familiar with yet) in my post, what to do with your goldwill get an inside look at the crafting and disenchanting process, and what works for us (and what doesn’t, we will make mistakes) as we prepare for the tournament.

You can catch me grinding for gold until the tournament so I can craft some cards on my stream.

Summary:

I’ve decided to join my first official tournament

Registration ends Friday – Tournament begins Saturday.

The tournament is free to access and open for players who have never been in Diamond and higher (gold and under only)

The cards are restricted to basic, common(gray), rare. No epics or legendaries.
This is a good opportunity to break into the tournament scene as a free player or a player with a limited collection, or simply a new player.

There are over 50 orbs being given away total.
Everyone who plays one game wins a prize.